Jaitley tells court he never took a rupee from DDCA in 13 years

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has accused Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and AAP of trying to deflect attention from the CBI raid in the CM’s secretary’s office with their Twitter war.

Jaitley had slapped a case against Kejriwal and senior AAP leaders for spreading defamatory statements against him on social media and through press conferences.

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday recorded Jaitley’s statement in the presence of his counsel senior advocate Sidharth Luthra and advocate Manoj D Taneja.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley (right) arrives at the High Court to record his statement

Veteran journalist Rajat Sharma appeared as a witness to the statements being recorded.

Jaitley told the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal that the six accused had published statements in coordination with a common intent that are defamatory towards him.

“Accused are public figures and are educated, journalists or in other professions. I am a BJP member and they are all members of a rival political party. The statements were made with malicious intention in order to lower my reputation amongst friends, supporters and in the eyes of the public at large. The comments from the public on the posts by the AAP leaders have damaged my reputation and caused me deep anguish. The accused have invited people to read and share these innuendos widely against me,” Jaitley told the court.

Denying all allegations, Jaitley said that during his 13-year tenure as DDCA president he never received a single rupee, nor charged any amount towards expenditure.

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Although the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium was built under his tenure as the DDCA president, the decision was put up before the executive committee and the accounts were submitted before taxation authorities.

Clarifying his association with 21st Century Media Pvt Ltd, Jaitley told the court that neither he nor anyone in his family ever had any commercial dealings.

“The sports management company was given their professional fees and all the transactions have been audited and were submitted before the board.”

Jaitley named journalists, lawyers and political colleagues who called him and sought clarifications after they read news reports about the posts and tweets and had developed serious doubts and were deeply disturbed.

“I had to offer explanations of denial towards all these allegations to each and every one of them,” said Jaitley.

“I was very disturbed after I read reports on the posts. I know Mr.Jaitley for the past four decades. I was disturbed as I am aware that false allegations can cause harm and destroy the reputation of any respectable person. Mr. Jaitley is a man of honesty, integrity and high moral standards,” said Rajat Sharma.